Warrant Officer Class 1 Mel Parry

Mel Parry, who died aged 76, was leader of the Special Air Service (SAS) “balcony team” which assaulted the Iranian Embassy in May 1980 after terrorists seized control of the building and 26 hostages in Princes Gate, South Kensington. “Operation Nimrod”, of which the balcony team was one element, introduced the wider world to the SAS and the now familiar images of assault teams dressed in “the black kit”, wearing respirators and carrying Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine-guns.

The terrorists, six Iranian Arabs belonging to a separatist group, believed to have been recruited, trained and armed by Iraq, stormed the embassy on April 30, demanding the release of comrades from Iranian prisons and safe passage out of the UK. Six days of tense negotiations with Metropolitan Police experts followed.

On May 5, after one hostage had been shot dead, the terrorists threatened to shoot another every 45 minutes if their demands were not met. The prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that the time had come for action.

Control of the operation was handed over from the Metropolitan Police to the SAS and shortly afterwards Operation Nimrod was launched in an effort to free the hostages and arrest, or if necessary kill, the hostage takers.

Parry was in charge of the four-man team charged with assaulting the building from the front first floor balcony while other teams gained entry at multiple points, some by abseiling down from the roof.

With the aid of explosives mounted on a frame they blasted access, and in the live television broadcast of the event Parry is the last black clad figure seen placing the charge and scrambling back into cover before the explosives detonate allowing entry. As Parry placed the charge, a terrorist above dropped a hand grenade on them, which fortunately failed to explode.

Parry’s team were tasked to clear a number of rooms, deal with any terrorists they encountered and to evacuate hostages. But conditions in the building rapidly became chaotic, with fires breaking out caused by stun grenades setting fire to soft furnishings.

One hostage was killed, as were five of the six terrorists, but the remaining 19 hostages were released. An inquest subsequently cleared the SAS of any wrongdoing. The surviving gunman served 27 years in British prisons.

Parry, along with several of his colleagues, was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his actions. The citation for the award was not published at the time, in keeping with Special Forces practice. But the final sentence reads: “Throughout the incident Trooper Parry set an outstanding example of courage and cool decisive leadership which was far in excess of that expected from a man of his rank.”

The operation brought the SAS to the public eye for the first time. As a result it was inundated with applications and its expertise became much sought after by foreign governments.

Melvyn Parry was born in St Asaph, North Wales.  In 1961 he enlisted into the Royal Artillery as a Boy Soldier joining the All Arms Junior Leaders’ Regiment, and from there he went to the 7th Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery (7 RHA), part of the 16th Parachute Brigade based in Aldershot.

He soon deployed with 7 RHA to South Arabia, where British troops were engaged fighting communist-backed Arab nationalists in and around Aden. He also took part in the 1964  campaign in Radfan, a mountainous and inhospitable area some 50 miles north of Aden, dealing with dissident tribesmen who had been attacking the Aden-Dhala Road.

To bring the Radfan campaign to a successful conclusion, 7 RHA operated in support of elements of the Royal Marines, the Parachute Regiment and the SAS, all ably supported by the RAF and Army Air Corps.

Parry was still only 19 when he passed the gruelling selection for 22 SAS, and there he spent the remainder of his career. In 1970, by now with B Squadron 22 SAS, he was back in the Arabian peninsula – this time in Dhofar, the mountainous region in south-west Oman where the SAS were conducting operations in support of the newly installed reformist Sultan Qaboos, who was endeavouring  to modernise his country and keep it from communist domination.

The enemy were local rebels known as Adoo, backed by regular troops and supplies from the nearby People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. During the operations, sometimes referred to as “Britain’s Secret War”, the SAS were involved in hundreds of contacts with the enemy, though the campaign received little or no publicity at the time but was eventually entirely successful.The regiment’s troopers employed, trained and led large numbers of local irregular troops known as Firqat to track down and engage the enemy, as well as conducting a “hearts and minds” campaign, providing tribespeople with security, medicines and access to the outside world. Like his comrades Parry was much involved and at one period he played a central role in containing a cholera outbreak in the village of Mirbat.

During one of the many actions in which he was involved, Parry was shot in the top of his shoulder by a sniper with a high-velocity bullet. The injury would have justified his evacuation, but Parry, not wanting to leave his comrades during a critical period, insisted that the wound simply be cleaned out and left open to heal. Over this period 13 SAS soldiers were killed and some 60 wounded in action. From a total strength of just over 200, this was a heavy toll.In 1972, following the deaths of kidnapped Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, the British government resolved to equip its security forces to be prepared for any such future eventuality. Parry was one of the men from 22 SAS who contributed to the development of the tactics and equipment required to assault buildings, vehicles and aircraft in order to rescue hostages, and for use in similar high-risk SAS missions.

Among the equipment they developed were framed explosive cutting charges used to precisely blast an entryway into buildings, and stun grenades (sometimes referred to as “flashbangs”) producing a large explosion capable of stunning and disorientating anyone close to detonation. Both were used in the Iranian embassy rescue.

Later Parry was involved in a number of assignments overseas which are still classified; he was also sent on Operation Banner, the operational name for the British Armed Forces’ deployment in Northern Ireland.

Parry had initially specialised as a member of the SAS Mountain Troop and he became an expert mountaineer. In 1984 he was a member of an SAS expedition which attempted to scale Mount Everest from the Chinese side, but the expedition came to a tragic end when the party were caught in an avalanche and one of the regiment’s best climbers was killed.

Throughout that decade Parry and his comrades continued working on both tactics and equipment for counter-terrorist operations. As a Warrant Officer (Class 1) he commanded the Operational Requirements Department and became the chief instructor in the Counter Revolutionary Warfare or CRW wing of the regiment.

He is credited as an inventor of the “ballistic shield”, the bullet-proof or bullet-resistant shield, made of Kevlar or similar synthetic material, which is now deployed by police, paramilitaries and the Armed Forces in situations where riot shields would not offer adequate protection.

Today the ballistic shield is used by anti-terrorist teams around the world. Parry liked to say his passion for Roman military history was the inspiration for the shield.

Later he designed and developed the Parry Blade, a multi-purpose survival knife considered by many to be the finest of its kind.

After retiring from the Army in 1990, Parry readily found work providing consultancy services and training both in Britain and overseas. For his services helping Norway in the development of its Norwegian Special Forces, the Forsvarets Spesialkommando or FSK, and in particular the establishment of its counter-terror unit over a period of 20 years, he was awarded the Norwegian Army Medal of Merit.

Parry’s other interests included rugby and boxing, and during his service he mastered colloquial Malay and Arabic. He was a passionate, articulate but modest soldier and one of the longest serving members of 22 SAS.

Mel Parry is survived by his wife Gail and a daughter.